'Employers know that they can hire worldwide now … so, there is limitless supply of people … who can do the job … . they're all qualified, most of them are actually over-qualified … . I'm a wage slave basically, I don't think we have very much social status … . we are replaceable workers … I mean, the employer holds all the cards really. We are salaried employees … no different from any other worker.' ("Owen, automation engineer 2017") (Respondent to CWKE interview with engineers) Post-secondary graduates and professional employees in particular are widely regarded as highly qualified strategic resources in advanced capitalist 'knowledge economies.' However, there is mounting evidence that these 'knowledge workers' are experiencing increasing underemployment as well as diminishing involvement in continuing learning and some decline in job satisfaction. Trends in these factors are documented primarily on the bases of a series of national surveys of the labour force in Canada between 1982 and 2016. Prospects for more critical attitudes to working conditions as well as shifts in theorising and policy-making regarding relations between employment reforms and educational reforms are considered. [This article began as an invited talk at the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in April 2018 and was later presented at the annual meetings of the Canadian Sociological Association in Vancouver, B.C. in June 2019.]